Medium: Ghost In The Machine

(S03E05) I think Scanlon got it right this week. "What brand was that camera? I wanna make sure I don't get one of those." While having the whole apartment glowing with a pulsing green light in the middle of the night would absolutely freak me out, I did think it was a pretty cool device for the story this week. And really, if you you have to be haunted by a camcorder, you could do worse than having it be the one that Kathleen Robertson (Clare from 90210) was being naughty on.

I was a little disappointed with the sniper part of the storyline, simply because it has been done too often lately. NCIS did it in "One Shot, One Kill", CSI: Miami did it in "Kill Zone", and The Closer did it in "Show Yourself." I'm sure there are more, but those are the three fairly recent examples that come to mind. Other than that it was an ok case for the team. It fell short of great because I thought they telegraphed the end really early on. It was obvious that 'Kathy' was playing Travis. The only real mystery was whether or not Sean was the mastermind. And for that to really work we would have needed much more focus on him.

That's too bad, because I thought the buildup of the mystery was really good. The creepy camcorder made me think of Friday the 13th, the television show, not the movies. Had it continued a little further into the digital age I could have seen Ryan and Micki tracking down a cursed camcorder. And the footage did a nice job giving us all the background on Diana/Kathy/Travis that we needed. I also liked the scene where the camcorder, or the spirit of Travis I suppose, kept sounding the car alarm. Showing that Allison really has no control over all of this. Her abilities are part of who she is, and she can't just ignore that. She just has to work through it the best she can.

The episode seemed kind of light on Devalos and Scanlon. Tough guy Scanlon interviewing Sean was good. That's really what he does best. Devalos wrapped up in the crisis of the sniper would have been better if it was given more time. As it was, there just wasn't enough time to build any real drama with that part of the story. I did like the final scene with all three of them confronting Diana. It was topped off nicely by the electronics store clerk, not realizing that he had just fingered Diana for murder, asking "How's that flat screen working out for you." Always angling for the next sale. If they hadn't ushered him out I'm sure he would have started talking Tivo's.

This week at casa de DuBois was actually really good. The breakfast table scenes are usually well done, and were again this week, but Joe's birthday was where the good stuff was. Joe's insistence that even though he doesn't smoke he can appreciate a finely crafted ash tray was very real world family. And Marie continues to be the cutest kid on TV, even when yelling at her father to go away. My favorite part though, was the conversation after the party with Allison and Joe. Her lament that every year she thinks it will be different, but then things happen and she worries that he just won't get how important he is, rings true for a lot of us I suspect. Not necessarily with birthdays, but there are many things where we end up thinking, "next time..."

Overall, it was a good episode. The mystery was somewhat lacking, but the story and the family stuff were good. The interesting casting choices continue next week as we get to see Red Foreman as a big time profiler. That should be interesting.